Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep35 - The Sea Witch with Amy Matthews

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Comedian and podcaster Amy Matthews takes the Loreboys on a spooky tour of her Essex hometown. From Bell Wharf to Doom Pond, Leigh-on-Sea is no stranger to strange goings-on. But what's the truth behind the legend of the witch who sold the wind? Order Amy's stand-up album Commute with the Foxes now, and check out the English Heritage Podcast! See the ⁠⁠Loremen LIVE in London on Oct 15th⁠⁠. This episode was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/loremen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check the sweet, sweet merch here... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @loremenpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/loremenpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from Days of Yore. I'm James Shakeshaft. I'm Alistair. And hey, Alistair, I'm about to do the patented We've Got a Guest Lawperson whisper. The classic Shakespeare whisper. Yes, because we've got a guest deputy law person. is Amy Matthews from comedy and the English Heritage Podcast. The English Heritage Podcast.

And she's going to tell us about the Sea Witch of Leon C. Alistair. Alistair, Pist. Hello? Hello. I'm here. I'm doing the, we've got a guest for a whispery voice because then, because I'm presuming that the guests' headphones aren't able to take this frequency. The guest, the guest is shaking their own head so we know that they can't hear us. They cannot simply cannot hear us. Alistair, we've got a guest. I'm going to go back into full voice, full yes, because I'm going to, Introduce the guest, Alistair, its comedian, writer and presenter, Amy Matthews. Welcome, Amy. Hello, folks. How are we doing? Are we well? Very well indeed, thanks. Very excited to have you here. Amy, you host the English Heritage podcast. Ooh, what a classy podcast to Hailn.

I do. I do. It's a very classy podcast. It's fun. We get to be silly and nerdy and folkloric and storytellie. So, yeah, I think there's some overlap. But presumably we can't get you to say anything bad about English heritage. Will you say anything bad about the National Trust? I assume that they are bitter rivals. Well, their name is filth around these parts. Are you worried about reprisals, though? Because we've explained to some of our across-the-seas listeners

the difference between National Trust and English Heritage is very much... I see you can't remember what that difference is, James. Could you explain that again? It's the bloods and the Crips. It's the blood and the criss of stately homes. Yeah. In the mean streets of various coastal and country walks. The mean avenues.

The mean avenues. Yeah, it's very competitive, of course. But yes, I am representing English heritage. English heritage, that's Stonehenge. That's their big gun. It is Stonehenge. That's their poster child. Yes.

The stenge. The stenge. But they have hundreds and, hundreds of places. Absolutely. Old Stony. But there's, I mean, we've, we, company woman.

We've got so many different locations. We've got castles. We've got nuclear bunkers. We've got stately homes. We've got, we've got all sorts. We've got a bit of everything. You've got above ground and below ground. We've got, honestly, we've got, and some of it's ground, just ground.

Wow. Some of it's just ground. Just the bare earth of sweet England, wow. The mains, yeah. So, you know, it's genuinely lovely. It's so fun to such a privilege to do because, I mean, I just get to speak to people who know loads about really specific things and hear them talk about it at length for, you know, sort of 40 minutes.

And I just get to hear people be passionate about weird and wonderful artifacts and places and moments from history. So, I mean, it's an absolute, it's a dream job. It's absolutely gorgeous. And obviously you're a comedian as well. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, for my sins. You've got an album? I've got an album, everyone.

My last show was all about how we use sound as distraction. No, all of our listeners focus very carefully on this. They never do any household tasks? They never put it on when they're going to sleep, do you, listener? You would never do that to us. The household tasks like going to sleep. You would never snooze while listening to this podcast. No way.

But for somebody who might, a less attentive podcast, listener than the lawman folk, than the law folk. We, yeah, so it was all about how we use sound as distraction. So it only felt fitting that the life it might have after its touring years would be in an audio format. So it's a vinyl and a, yeah, I know, analogue, rogue. So it's a comedy album that's on vinyl, but there's an option to either just purchase the digital version, which is like an extended version anyway, or if you order the vinyl,

you automatically get the extended digital version with it. So if you haven't got a vinyl player, you can just use the vinyl as a frisbee or a big coaster. Whatever you want, whatever you want, whatever you want to do. A plate. Yeah, you can honestly, you could do whatever you like with it. I won't tell anyone. A plate with a small central hole to make it a challenge.

Exactly. A fun plate. A fun wuzzy plate. So yeah, it's been so fun to work on. And crucially, it's I rewrote the actual show to be a little. audio format in the sense that it doesn't have a live audience. It is like an immersive soundscape because it was all about sound. The show itself has been rewritten to be an immersive experience. So like when you hear me talk about somebody walking down the stairs, you can hear them

walking down the stairs around you. When I talk about going to a medieval tavern, you can hear a medieval tavern around you or when I reference somebody writing a letter, you can hear them writing the letter at their desk. So the idea was as well, I mean, it's called commute with the foxes. If anyone's got an hour commute, they can listen to it on their headphones and be transported sort of through the show in these various immersive soundscapes. So, yeah, I just wanted to do something a little bit different with it. Be playful with sound and, yeah, and just sort of make a product at the end of it.

It's so rare that a show is a physical thing. It's an excessively classy way to release a special, I think. And financially devastating. So everyone listening. should probably buy about nine. I'm sure they will. If they're still awake at this point in the podcast, it is a risk.

Most of them will have dropped off. But anyway, let's hope someone is still away. Well, if they want a big vinyl pillow, I know a guy. We'll pop a link in the notes. Fabulous. Thanks, guys. But, Amy, whilst you said you like to talk to people who know very much, who know very lot,

who know a lot about a certain things, thing. You are on the reverse of that at the moment. We are two people that know very little about many things. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that as well. Fortunately for all of us. Fortunately, you're here to educate us because you've brung along some tales, right? I've brung along some tales. So I currently, I live, well, but it's sort of between Edinburgh and London these days. So in Birmingham? In Birmingham, a classic. Do you know what? It's a good solid bit that good solid bit

it's nice good honest fun but I am currently coming to you from my hometown in fact I'm coming to you from my teenage bedroom Wow

so I know speaking of things from history I am currently in my teenage bedroom and what's quite extraordinary my parents have sort of you know like Miss Havisham lived forever in her wedding day

my parents have sort of frozen my teenage years in time so my teenage bedroom is barely touched from when I left it. Wow. Like a time capsule. Like a time capsule. So it's a time capsule of all the things you didn't want to take to university. Exactly right. Exactly right. So yeah, it's really nice actually to be, obviously, I grew up in Leoncy in Essex on the Thames Estuary.

So we will be doing some, we'll be looking at some stories and some legends from Leoncy. And it's, yeah, a delight to be recording by complete coincidence. From Leoncy itself. Maybe the listener can pick up some of the Lee-on-C-vibes coming through the airwaves. I think you can you probably hear the waves crashing against oldly old town and the street youths gathering outside. So it's Li-on-C-C, not Lyon, like the French word. That's right. It's L-E-I-G-H-H-H-on-H-H-on-H-C.

Oh, we've got a double-hyphen town. Double-hyphen. I did look it up to get a little bit of sort of local flage. and it said that it used to be just called Lee. And now it's Lee on sea, which makes me worry... Climate change. It makes me worried that next is going to be Lee in sea. As I say, I live in Birmingham.

It's actually the middle of the year. Because there's a Lee in Kent. So I'm guessing this is complete conjecture. Yeah. I'm guessing this is complete conjecture, but I'm guessing then if they wanted it to be on sea, it was to differentiate between that one. Oh, yes.

Right, right. Potentially. I mean, she said with the author, of someone who didn't just completely, like wildly guess that that was what's happening. The reverse of Bromley in Kent, where they had in Kent appended to Bromley. Have they? Did they? Although where's the other Bromley? Well, when I was a kid...

Bromley by Bo. Is it Bromley by Bo? All I remember when I was a kid is people would always phone into kids' TV shows to play the games. They would almost always be from Bromley in Kent. And it always irritated me that it got that in Kent. I'm from Bromley in Kent. Are you from Bromley in Kent? I'm from Bromley and Kent.

Wow. I didn't know that. So there's the London borough of Bromley, and I think it used to be. I am guessing even more than I'm guessing that Lee is going to ultimately be named Lee and C. I think it will be Lee and C at some point. And also, funnily enough, my family are from Stamford La Hope, which is another double hyphen. Stanford for the Hope, sorry, translate for English. For any, anyone who doesn't speak French.

So this is your east of London In the south-east of England In the Thames Estuary The Thames Estuary opposite Like across the water from Kent So what's the latest in Lee? The latest in Lee The latest in Lee is

Well we've got ourselves a little folk festival these days And we've got ourselves Morrisons I thought you were going to say Morris Dancer Yeah But just in Morrison's well done Well we're significantly lighter on witches than we used to be.

There were a lot of witch trials around these parts. And I think there are fewer of those going, well, certainly that I'm aware of. But yeah, we had quite a few witches knocking around, apparently. Although it's obviously always hard to know whether they were witches or women who learned maths or something. So who, so which of these are we talking about today? Which of these are we talking about today?

We're, yeah, we're going to go back a little bit further than sort of the last new years to, I tell you what, let's wet our whistles with Mary Ellis. Are you familiar with Mary Ellis? No. No, she wasn't on Bake Off. She was alive at, well, I think she was born in 1490 and crucially died in 1609. Now, the mathematicians among you, I know, will clock that that. is 119 years old, okay, this woman. I guess that's on the edge of plausible, maybe just...

That's one of the oldest people. Apparently so. She lived, according to her gravestone in St. Clement's Church in Leon C. She lived throughout the entire 16th century. She saw every Tudor monarch live and die. Isn't that extraordinary? You'd be sick of ruffs by the end of it, wouldn't you? You'd be sick of ruffs.

I've added up to here, you would say, pointing to your ruff. So apparently lived for 119 years To the ripe old age of 119 years And when she died She was buried in St Clement's Churchyard And there was a stone laid upon her tomb Now there's two points of, sorry, three points of interest Obviously the first being her age, quite extraordinary

The second being that Well one, she was commemorated The fact that she was a woman alive at this time With a named grave and the only thing on the grave, apart from her age, is the fact that she was a virgin. Oh. That seems to be a point of interest.

That would have been an insult at my secondary school. It makes the Steve Carroll film look pathetic. He's a third of the way there. 119-year-old virgin. Did I say his name right, Carol? Carrel. I think it's Corell. Correll.

I won't tell anyone. And so she was a 119-year-old. old virgin. And also then the final point of notes is that the cutlass stone that lays on top of it is so called because a sort of undulating stone on top of the tomb with very, very noticeable striations along the top, where people used to apparently sharpen their swords for either good luck before going out on their sort of seafaring voyages because of this woman living to 119 years old. It was seen as good luck. Or the legend also has it that these were press gangs waiting for congregations to file out of the church, to press gang young men into a life at sea.

They would, out of boredom, sharpen their cutlasses on the cutlass stone. However, in doing so, alerted the congregation inside, unwittingly telling them that they were outside waiting for them. So they would often just let the elderly leave the congregation if they heard the cutler stone being being swiped at. Exactly. It's the press gangers. Watch out. I mean, we don't really know. The records aren't very, a lot of this is folkloric, it's oral tradition. We don't know a huge amount about whether, like I say, whether it was press gangs, whether it was naval officers going out and doing it for good luck, or whether it was just local farmers sharpening their sides on it, because it was there and it was practical.

So we don't know how much of it is our propensity to build legend and storytelling around these things. We obviously don't even really know if she was 119 years old, but it feels significant enough that it was marked on her grave, along with obviously her virginity. Yeah, I don't want to be as skeptic about the age, because I suppose it is possible. You could live that long. But I think there are two things that can potentially explain really old people in the past, which is the tendency for old people to lie about when they were born.

And the tendency of people to be named the same thing as one of their parents means that I think the combination of those two things mean a few people did get away with claiming to be a lot older than they were probably. But I'm sure she was actually a 190. Shame she didn't go to the full 120 virgin. It is a shame, isn't it? Frustrating not to have hit a nice round. number there on the virginity. Yeah, that's true. We'll forgive her, I think. Yeah, obviously she stopped being a vision because she died, not because she had it off, obviously.

She decided in her 119th year to get quite slutty. I suppose if you get to a certain age and enough of the people are similar age to you have died, you can just start saying whatever you want, because there's no one there. It's true. If you've outlived everybody you know, you can tell... Exactly. you could tell anyone. But yeah, either way, it's a really... There's obviously always something very nice

about tangible history and these sort of palimpsestic features in the landscape where you get to actually physically touch these things from the past, even though we don't know exactly who she was and why these marks are in the cutler stone. You can, none of it's cordoned off or anything,

you can literally go and put your hands on this tomb and on this stone. So it's really nice. It's a nice little bit of local history. Absolutely. Maybe the sailors were going to the stone and sharpening their blades in the hope of maintaining their virginity

during the fishing voyage. A new theory has entered the chat. In case of, you know, in quiet moments during the fishing voyage, the temptation might have been too great. It's very true. The tomb. It's very, very true.

Maybe she just, you know, people say, oh, what's the secret to live so long? Cutlasses. and then that's why people are like, oh, right, okay, we'll do that. And here we are. It's true. Okay, that's lovely. I like that we're generating new theories as well. This is lovely. Folklore is a living tapestry. It is. And my favourite thing is coming out with new theories based on absolutely nothing.

I love that. I think there should be more of that. A bit of an idea. I think there should be more of that, for sure. So, yeah, that's our first local lady to Leon C who's got some proto-magical properties. But I think I really, really want to talk about the Sarah Moore. And when I say the Sarah Moore, the Sarah Moore is a pub. I thought it was a person. And it's named after a person. It's named after a person called Sarah Moore. Imagine if it wasn't.

To give her her full title, The Sea Witch of Leon C. I should say as well, I'm going to up top give credit to author Sid Moore. She's done a lot of wonderful research on the Sarah Moore because, sorry, she's done a lot of research on Sarah Moore because a lot of sort of, again, word of mouth, oral histories, folklore traditions. She's actually done quite a lot of sifting through local records to try and sift fact from fiction. So let's start with the stories and then we'll get into the records, I think, because I think the stories are probably a bit more fun. essentially there's legend had it that sarahmore local which would sit on bell wharf again still

exist today it's it's where you go and and jump into the estuary on a on a high tide day in the summer is where you sharpen your bell it's where you're showing well do you know it's it's it's funnily enough it is where teenagers go to to kiss each other oh it's make out point it's it's make out point wow it is it is so you know it's it's it's a stage that's seen many scenes Steer clear from that area, teens. Go and rub that virginity stone. Yeah, go see Mary Ellis. Don't go and see Sarah Moore.

So she would sit on Bellworf and charge the sailors a penny to give them good weather. So she charged local seafarers penny to bless their voyage and to bless them with good weather. I saw this described when I was doing a little briefly on sea research as that she would sell wind. Oh, that's an interesting way of... Which I think people still do, to this day, I've heard. You can... You can do that, yeah, on OnlyFans. On Only fans, I believe that...

I think that's a subsect. Yeah, there's a request. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, she would sell wind to say this. Wow. On this tangent, I'm just got... I was at a wedding this weekend. I was informed of the Etsy witch.

Have we heard of the Etsy witch? I was aware that there were Etsy witches. Well, apparently... Is there just one? Apparently there's a witch on Etsy who you can pay for good weather on your wedding day. Oh, isn't that extraordinary? So, I mean, in many ways, Sarah Moore was the original Etsy witch.

And so she would, yeah, she would deliver whatever weather would be for tuatous for seafaring people. The captain of the smack, which again, for locals to Leoncy, we'll know, the smack is another local pub. So we've got, you could, there we go, you could do, anyone wanting to do a lawman pilgrimage, could do a part. crawl to Leoncy. Sharp and their cutlers. Kiss someone. Buy some wind. If we were playing

the James Shakeshaft pub game where you get points for the number of legs, we'd have two for the Sarah Moore. But the smack, does the ship have any legs or do the legs of all the sailors' couch? Wait a minute.

What is the smack? Is the smack like someone's getting, someone being corporately punished? The smack is a boat, originally. Because then you might get two

if someone's, you know, getting caned or whatever. It's true. Yeah, the smack could also, it could be another, with, I mean, again, another subsect on Only fans, I think. Exactly.

Yeah, the smack was originally, yeah, a boat. And the captain of the smack forbade his crew to engage in the suspicious witchy activity from Sarah. Forbade them to engage in spooky goings on. No interfering of the weather. I like this guy already.

Boys. Guys, I know you like getting spooky, but stop it. No, no spooky to Sarah. Stop getting spooky when you go ashore. And apparently, word got back to Sarah that he'd forbade the crew to buy her good fortune. And so obviously she was pretty light on coinage that day. And in a fit of rage towards the captain, she unleashed a storm upon them. And apparently during the storm, it was so bad that the captain had.

to fetch an axe and fell the main mast to stop them being carried and whipped about. That is very extreme. Yes, it is.

Well, he seems quite a dramatic chap. He seems quite a dramatic man. And he took three slashes of his axe to the main mast and when they eventually

made it back onto the shore they found a dead Sarah Moore with three slashes to her body. I know. Excellent.

She was the mast, maybe? Who's to say? Oh, a little. Who's to say? So that's how one version of the story goes. Now, like any good story, there's an alternative ending. The other way the story is sometimes told is that... Was she just the harbour master pretending to be a witch to scare people off in order to lower the price, I think?

A new ending has entered the chat. We've got three. The re-new ending. She was going to redevelop Belle War. Well, do you know what? I'm glad you've brought up redevelopment. Because, what a segue. Because the other ending is that when the sea,

when the storm was unleashed onto the estuary and the smack was battered about, the only surviving member of the crew was the captain. And when he made it back onto the shore, he decapitated Sarah Moore. And her head was found floating in Doom Pond. Now, Doom Pond, also known as Pottery Pond. That's a bit less dramatic than Doom Pond.

If Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings was called Mount Pottery, I don't think it would be as frightening. I wouldn't have the same thing, would it? But however, it's also been known, it's a pond of many names. It's also been known as Dome Pond, which is where we think Doom Pond originally came from. That's halfway between Doom and Pottery, really, isn't it the dome? originally perhaps known for the fact that there were kilns and, yeah, for the ceramics around it. But it also was known as the drowning pond because we think that there were some witch trials that went on there too.

So Doom Pond has since been drained and built upon, but it's seen as cursed land because they tried to build a spa on it, as in like a spa at the corner shop, not a sort of wellness centre. Right. Okay. I can't believe it was the corner shop, because me and James were clearly both deciding which one we were going to humorously misunderstand it. I wouldn't want a jacuzzi in a doom jacuzzi. Sorry, that sounds great, James.

The doom jacuzzi. That sounds like the band I did soot-housy. The doom jacuzzi probably supported the horrors at some point. Yes, you've got a poster on your teenage bedroom there of doom jacuzzi. I'm going to go in the cold plunge pottery. The Doom Pond was drained, and as I say, the spa built upon it. It's very short life. It ended up being claimed by the earth.

It was like it was the spa essentially sunk into the land. Yes. That got wiped. Then it got drained again and obviously. Drained again, but there's a spa down there. I've got an image of it. Trying to pump the spa out of the ground. Now it's haunted by witches and expensive biscuits.

Delis de France baguettes Crawlid like Like sort of fingers Coming out of the ground Of like five demi-Mugettes There you go Amy will not say a word Against English Heritage

But she will absolutely Slate Spa For some reason Take that She's a niece Exactly It's funny actually There's now a premiere

Opposite But there's So they built on it again But this time Obviously nothing Nothing that important Only residential flats Where people live

Oh, okay, okay. Wait a minute, they moved the headstones, but they forgot to move the spa. It's like a poltergeist, but with a spa instead of Native American burial ground. I suppose it's less problematic. Yeah, it's true. It is somewhat less problematic. We could reboot that franchise. The Amityville Horror is built on a Tesco Metro.

Yeah, but now there are flats on the Doom Pond. What are they called? I hope they've gone down the pottery vibe for the naming. Shall I check what they're called? What is it called? Lee-on-C-Cerced Flats. Cursed. Doom Murder Flat, Lee-on-T.

If it says on like midnight on moonless nights, you can hear someone going round putting the reduced stickers on the product. I'm pretty sure it's got a net. Do you know what? I can't remember what it's called now. Well, maybe we shouldn't docks the people who live in the haunted, cursed, Doom, Flats.

They've got enough problems as it is. But yeah, so they, anyway, back to Sarah. down an estate agent rabbit hole. So she may also have been decapitated there. Now, these are the legends, right? She's either a floating head and doom pond or she's been felled by the captain of the smack. Now, author Sid Moore has done a bit of digging in local records and found actually that Sarah Moore died in 1867 three years before the supposed great storm of 1870. So we can't... She's in the clear. She's got an alibi of being dead. It's a really good alibi.

That's an open and shut casket. Lovely stuff. Lovely stuff. So we think she probably, we can't probably lay the blame of the storm at her door. However, we may be able to lay some other spooky goings on at her door. She actually, she married twice, had not legend, legend, and had not. not just children of her own, but stepchildren too. And we know that she, tragically, she lost six children and had nine children. So she's, she's lived a big old life.

There's a lot going on there. She's got a family to support whilst obviously grieving lots of tragedy in her life as well. And she, we know from the records that she was a mangler. Now, this would have, she would have been like a washerwoman, essentially. Now, a washerwoman is also going to explain one of the only portraits we have of her, which was a painting of her really hunched over, again, giving her quite a stereotypically witchy look. She also had a sort of big bag on her back, which people sort of surmised, I don't know, might have some witchy goings on in there. Yeah, just witch's bag, classic witch's bag, you know? So she was, yeah, she was likely a mangler.

It's like an inkblot, isn't it? You can see anything you want in that bag. a Rorschach test of how much you want to sort of recast a woman trying her best as an evil witch lady. And she, yeah, so she was having to support a family on a mangler's wage, having been widowed twice. So she had to diversify. She had some side hustles, as we'd say. She was a bit of a herbalist. As I say, she would sell good weather and tell fortune at Belle Woff.

original Etsy Witch, as we've established. Selling the weather, that is good. That's a good hustle. Yeah, I think selling weather supported the horrors as well. As I say, very tragically, she had two sons that died in a cholera outbreak. And on the anniversary of their death went into what was described locally as a gin frenzy. Again, I think we can, a relatable queen, we can all, we can all. Yeah, no, absolutely.

we stand Sarah Moore on this podcast. I also think, yeah, the horror supported Gin Frenzy. Gin Frenzy, that's true. Yeah, I think Gin Frenzy was maybe their first album. And in a gin frenzy, yeah, went about, sort of actually, I think, yeah, went about causing trouble in the town. I assume gin was basically poison in those days. I think so, I think so. And then in, obviously, after this sort of big lashing out, felt a lot of embarrassment and remorse and

try to rectify things by laying a herbal potion at the doors of any families with young children to protect them from the cholera outbreak that robbed her of her two sons. Now, this gesture as a herbalist, it didn't have the lasting effect of a lovely gesture that she wanted. Rather, because a lot of the children then died of the cholera outbreak, It looked to them like she had lain a curse or a cursed potion at the doorsteps of these families. So what was a gesture as a herbalist or a doctor, sort of, yeah, herb woman, a witch woman, cunning woman, became sort of slightly more rebranded as a witch's curse in light of the tragic deaths in these families. This was a narrative only hammered home by the fact that after getting a reputation as a, as a, as a, as a,

a witchy lady. There were four children that visited her house down in Old Lee and they found the door open and nobody in and the four kids couldn't resist a little, a little breaking in to the witch's lair. A little breaking in. Just a fun little breaking in. But I'm sure they were doing it ironically. Of course. And when they went into the witch's lair to obviously find nobody home, They rummaged through her stores and found some mystery liquids. And just as one of the girls was reaching up to find a potion, Sarah was making her way home. And they called out the witch is coming, the witch is coming. And in a panic, the youngest child dropped the potion and at the same time knocked over a candle.

And the potion was flammable. Now, the child was then seen running through the streets a flame. Now, legend has it that Sarah walked in to her home to find these children in her home and cast sparks across the room and set these kids on fire. So again, very, very quickly, we've got some, he sheds, some, she said, they said, going on about how much of it was bad luck, how much of it was just some, kids being naughty and how much of it was the witch doing her witchy things once again. But it's only served to amplify the accusations that Sarah was a commudgeonly old spooky witch lady.

Yeah, so as the sort of the longer she lived and the more tragedy surrounded her and her life only served to hammer home that she was perhaps a local witch woman. You know, as much as she was, I think originally a herbalist trying her best to support a family. A few turns of events meant that she became known and has been sort of claimed by history as the sea witch of Leon C. Wow. Very sad, I suppose. Quite unfair. Quite late for a witch as well in time. You know, 19th century. I think that the most sort of damning legacy of her name is a quite bad pub. Oh, take that. Amy hates it more than spa.

I do. Yeah, I think the most offensive sort of use of her name and her memory is, you know when a pub is slightly too brightly lit and play sports on a bad TV? Oh, recessed LED lighting in a pub. Yeah. No. So I think that's probably the greatest affront to her memory. However, credit where credits due, after Sid Moore, the author did a lot of research on Sarah Moore and did a fictionalised version of the book. it's called the drowning pool. It's based on Sarah Moore's legend. She did the book launch at the

Sarah Moore Pub. And after learning about how perhaps history treated Sarah quite unfairly, they actually rebranded the font of the pub, because the font and the imagery around it, because the imagery was always of her as a haggard old witch. And they rebranded it as without that imagery to sort of redeem her memory slightly, which is nice. Oh, that's good. Very good. Fair play to them. Very lovely. So yes, so we've got Mary Ellis, the elderly virgin, and Sarah Moore, the herbalist sea witch. So, you know, we might be light on modern day celebrities, but we were full of spooky ladies back in the day. Two fine tales there, Amy. Thank you. Thank you so much. Too fine, if anything.

Yeah, excessively fine tales. Beautiful, oh, thank you for letting me wax lyrical about the witchy babes of Leon C. Another great name for a band Another great name for a band The full name Witchie Babes of Leoncy Whichie Babes of Leoncy I think that could be also

Witchie Babes brackets of Leoncy Or just WBLOS For those of us who are hardcore fans Don't have time to say the whole thing out Not enough bracketed song names these days Really is it dying out I agree It's all one word

So should we go to the scores Yes please seeing how they've performed. So, I mean, we've had a few names knocking around. How are we each scoring the various names featured in our witchy tales? Right, yeah, I'm from the south, so I'm Amy's lawyer. You're biased in favour of... Yeah.

But I must say I was very impressed by Doom Pond, even if it did very quickly turn out not to be the Pond's real name. Pottery, lovely pottery Pond, still quite a nice name. What are the good names did we have in the tale? The smack. Very dramatic name for a ship. Yes. The smack.

The smack. And the pub, I should say, as well, is technically called ye oldie smack. Ye old smack. Known locally as the smack. Mm-hmm. The old smack. Bellwarf. Lovely.

Sexy, sexy, bellwulf. The people themselves. Mary Ellis and Sarah Moore. And Sarah Moore. Yes. And Sid. more. We've got more moors for your morning. That's a lot of moors.

More, more, more brackets, how do you like? How do you like it? Popular film The 119-year-old virgin. That is a big hit. That's the name of the film. Popular teen comedy. Oh yeah, it's a fine crop of names. I'm going to give it a four. Yes.

Four for the moors. I feel like it could have had one more more, which might have brought it up to a five. But it's a good four. So we've got our four for names. That's good. We'll take it. Let's score our supernails. We've got some spooky stuff going on.

I really liked it when he chopped through the... I'm not sure that that's standard practice. I don't think they have axes which say break glass in the event of emergency and then chop down the mast. I've never heard of anyone doing that, but very bold. But then for her to be chopped up when they got back to the land, which is be chopping or being chopped. Witches be chopping is really strong.

Didn't we learn that splice is. the main brace was cutting the sail in half if it was too windy, yeah. Oh, I thought splicing was combining things, but I'm sure. Oh, no, maybe it was the other way around. What is battening down a hatch? That's what I want to know. Oh, yeah, what is to batten down the hatch?

I guess it's to stop the hatch is blowing open. It feels naval, doesn't it? There's no point battening down a hatch on land. Yeah, no, it's the opposite. Splice in the main brace is repairing some rope. But it's, I believe, a euphemism for having a, having a bit having some rum oh is that what they were up to those 15 men on a dead man's chest that's fantastic but the category of supernatural yes there's a lot it's very very rich very

rich in supernatural goings on a lot of witching however some of the witching does seem to have been debunked by emily more did you say sid more by sid more by her research i'm i am noticing the similarity between the witch name and the the biographer of the witch's name there and I'm a little... I don't want to... I don't want to blow this coast wide open, but are we sure that this isn't the witch themselves? Do you think she could be reincarnated?

They're immortal. Or just, like, over 119 years old, the people from that area, Leon C... Famously. The virgins... Can be very long-lived. Yeah, a virgin, a virgin... A 19-year-old virgin in Essex?

Yes, mysterious. Supernatural. It's a very high school. That's good stuff. It's good stuff. I think it's five out of five for Supernatural. There's some properly good witchy tales. And also, I mean, who chops a witch's head off and then tries to drown the head? That's commitment to creepy, horrible business. It's true. And she may have even unleashed a storm three years after she died. Explain that. Checkmate atheists.

Yeah, it's a very, it's a spooky, it's a couple of spooky tales. Very, very spooky. Yeah, it's a five out of five for Supernatch. Yes, well done. Third category. As your lawyer, I'm going to step in. I would recommend you play their stunning debut album category. This is classic cat.

Go on, pop it to him. Let's play our stunning debut album category. Oh, yeah. Many a great band name slash album title. Yes, we had. Rich. So many. so many that we've all forgotten at this point, I think.

The sunken spa, yes. Sunk and spa brackets, don't look for the discounts. Haunted biscuits. Just they're not there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The problem is, as we've discovered many times in this podcast, it's impossible to come up with any sentence that doesn't sound like a band name, pretty much. I'm here for it. I'm so here for it.

Rural Feldspar sounds like a band. It does. It does. electric train set Floating Head on the Doom Pond Floating Head of the Doom Pond That's the album That is the debut album Floating Head in the Doom Pond

Who are clearly the rest of the band It's true It's true Floating Head going solo How can floating head go solo They can't play an instrument Apart from probably Probably a vocalist

Yeah the harmonica Or maybe a recorder badly Them The mouth organ Mouth harp I think And you got a plug that, though. Oh,

you need some fingers to pluck it. You need some bandmates. Fair enough. Bear enough. Think it through floating head before you break up the band. I think these are all fine band names, but I'm afraid it's going to be a three

because I think they've all sold out and or gone mainstream since I heard about them earlier in the podcast. So if we've done the scores then, maybe they would have been fives, but by now they really sort of played out tawdry and tedious. But if you listen to Ben,

El Wharf's electric album, it is actually really good. Before they took it in a new direction. Yeah, yeah. I like the old stuff before they recorded any songs. Yeah, I prefer their early stuff, yeah. When they were sort of more penny witches as opposed to snobbing teenagers. I liked it when they're actually still called the Cutler Stone before they became Cutler Stone. Yeah, before they dropped it.

Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, it's good stuff. There's some pretty solid scoring there. I'm chuffed with that. You're doing very well. You're doing very well.

Very chuff with that. What is the final category? Well, Alice is staying with the musical theme, we're going to go with your friend of mine, bewitched, B-star-witched, blame it on the weatherman. The band, 90s band, be-witched, be-star-witched, stylised written B-star-Witched. Number one hitch, blame it on the weatherman.

Yeah, the bedenimed relatives from the guy from Boy's Own. Yes. Do you know what else? You don't see enough asterixes in band names anymore either. No. I'll tell you what, we're losing. punctuation, left right and centre. Kids today. Not enough brackets, not enough stars.

I think these days you'd assume that they were swearing in some way and there was something offensive about bewitched. Yeah, it's usually used to, yeah, hide a swear. Or maybe there's just a footnote that we don't know what it is and we'll never know what the footnote, the bewitched footnote is. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Or maybe they were just preemptively trying to fool the algorithm.

Mm. That's the other time you see an asterix these days. When you want to say a swear, you also want your video to go viral, so you have to spell it weirdly or put a star in there. If you want to say, bum or something. Please bring me to listen. Please, listen, put asterixes into your ears. I said asterisks.

They're never going to forgive me for that. I meant to say asterisks. It's all right. We've been recording for nine hours. It's now three in the morning. Blame it on the Weatherman by Ray Madman Head. James. I just happened to know that the person who wrote it was Ray Madman Hedges. Not to be confused.

Yeah, that's not a hyphenated surname. Not to be confused with the King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard song. Blame it on the weather. Oh, man. Brackets, man. Well, you must always take the weather with you. Yes. Yeah. There's so much weather in here.

That's actually very hard to follow advice because that isn't how weather works. But it is always there. So maybe you did take it with you. Yeah, actually, that's true. wherever you are, you're experiencing 100% weather. Whatever the weather is. So maybe one more person should squeeze into that crowded house

and tell them that that doesn't make any sense. The weather was there already. Just into the letterbox. Wait, the weather was there already. See, Leah. Blame it on the weatherman. Is it another song. That listener was the sound of two people

miming, shouting things through letter boxes. Yeah. It may not have come across in the audio medium. Of course it's five out of five for Blame it on the Weatherman B-Star Witch's number one hit. Also looking at the Wikipedia page, I'm disturbed that the Canadian chart is called the Canada Adult Contemporary. Oh, very saucy. That sounds like it's saucy. But yeah, okay, fair play.

For the video, the band wore a mixture of their trademark denim and leather. I think cowboys invented that more than the band Bewitched. No, B-Star Witch, double dens. They were dubbed den. They were the dubbed den, were they? The original dubbed dens. Yeah, they would, because they were triple because they would be wearing jeans, a jacket, and a denim skirt.

Wow. A skirt and jeans. Whoa, James, you blow in my mind. I didn't know. That was possible. Yes, Alistair. I am blowing your mind. This is witchcraft.

Yeah, it's got to be a five out of five. There was a witch, and they blamed it on the weatherman and, or woman in this case. And the band is called Beast Are Witched, which, which we pronounce bewitched usually. So, yeah, it's a five out of five. Amy, where should the listener go if they want to hear or see more of your stuff? Well, I am on Instagram at Amy F. Matthews. I tend to sort of promote most things through there.

Also, I have a website, amymathewscom. And on both of those spaces on the internet, I will be pushing the release of my vinyl. We're funnily enough, there's actually a bit in the vinyl where somebody shouts something through a letterbox. So if you loved the bit where somebody shouted something through a letterbox in an audio format, my goodness, this is for you. Wow. You're going to hear that again, but with so much better sound design than on our podcast where we just mined it with our hands and you couldn't hear that. You could potentially hear a hand flapping, but that was it. You might have heard the rustle of human skin, of aged skin against skin.

Exactly. It'll be nothing like the quality of what you're going to hear on Amy's album. Exactly right. So yes, that is out and about in the world. and yet if you are a fan of history and we do loads of stuff around folklore as well the English Heritage podcast is out and about wherever you get your pods and I will be back working up live shows

from now really and I mean it's terrifying we're putting in tour dates for next year for a live show that doesn't exist yet but we'll do soon so please keep an eye out for work in progress dates that start sort of spilling out in the next couple of weeks really nice one thank you very much Amy that was wonderful

thank you so much Thank you very much, Amy. Yeah, that was really good too. I really want to check out that album, actually. It's out soon or out already if you're listening to this in the future. Good work, James. Always forgetting that time moves forwards, inexorably forwards. It just simply won't stop, will it?

It just will not stop. But if you want to listen to something from the past, you could join us on patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod and you can find a whole back catalogue of bonus episodes including the bonus from this episode where a mystery has begun. A mystery. A very mysterious mystery.

Oh, it's a stinky mystery. A stinky mystery. Hmm. Hmm. folk, this is an important apology from me, Alistair. I need to address Rainbow Gate. In the recent Plutley episode, the Rainbow Song came up. As we all know, it goes red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue, not violet and blue, as I previously claimed. James has asked me to clarify on the record that he was right, and also that don't look for it. It's not there is a

real saying, apparently, the people say. And in spite of my protestations when the phrase came up. Keep your knees soft is also a thing that people say. I've just never been in a sporty situation where anyone would say that. And as a consequence, I spent my entire life with my knees rigidly locked in place. James also claims that I once made a mistake about ball lightning, but neither of us can remember what it was. I just don't think that sounds right, you know? Ball lightning. I don't think lightning could go in a ball.